


Traps

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Depressing, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Harm to Children, Ninja, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-29
Updated: 2005-05-29
Packaged: 2018-02-16 23:17:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2288228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A musing on the nature of hidden villages. Downbeat and philosophical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Traps

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the 5/29/2005 word #108 on [15minuteficlets](http://15minuteficlets.livejournal.com). It can be read as a companion to [Children's Crusade](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2288240), a similarly-themed ficlet I wrote four years later.

When you enter a ninja academy, or begin family training, that choice is for life. You can't stop being a ninja. You can't leave that life behind. If you retire, people always remember your skills, and always call on you no matter how much you ask to be left alone. If you leave, they hunt you down -- they can't risk you working against the village or the family, even if you swear to leave them in peace.

The teachers tell this to their students, and parents often tell their sons and daughters, but children don't have a good concept of time or of the ways people change as they grow older. They want to fight, to be strong, to be the _best_ \-- and in a hidden village, the best is always a ninja. No six year old boy cares about the best shoemaker or tailor. No five year old girl cares about the best grocer or cook.

So they learn stealth, and cunning. They learn the value of surprise. They learn to plan, and to see through others' plans. They learn to run and jump and dive and roll. They learn to punch and kick, to turn even their fingers into weapons. They learn to throw knives, to wield swords, to string wires. They learn to draw on their chakra and use it, not to become one with the world, not to create marvels, but to kill. They turn the miracle of life into darkness.

The ninja move in the world, but they aren't of it, not truly.

Many never realize how they cut themselves off. Some do, and work out elaborate philosophies to justify their trade -- taking life to preserve other life, like surgeons on a grand scale. Some fall into darkness.

And some grow older and realize that maybe they don't want to skip across the surface of life anymore. Maybe they don't want to be the bringers of death. Maybe they'd rather be shoemakers and grocers, tailors and cooks.

But they are ninja. And that choice is until death.


End file.
